I've seen all discussions about Play2Win vs Pay2Win thing and I've played in this server myself, so here's what I think.
Latest tier (EGY B) items being only obtainable through gameplay sounds good in theory but in reality it's not cutting it because of other balance factors.
The first one is alchemy. Good luck making your set +7 and above without spending a ton of silks on Immortal, Astral stones, elixirs and other stuff like temporary alchemy boost scrolls, lucky magic powder etc. What’s the point of having an end-game item if it’s only +5?
The second one is all temporary damage increase/absorption/HP/MP/Movement speed boost scrolls. I don't understand why these things exist in the game at all. You can have all your EGY B items but then you join survival arena and see people buffed with all these scrolls, balloons etc so your “advantage” goes to waste.
Then there’s Devil/Angel spirit which is a very important item and once again it can only be improved by alchemy which requires a lot of silks, again.
And then there’s also the fact that obtaining Electus Points is easier for better equipped players before EGY B update through activities like survival area, jobbing kills, unique hunting. It’s a “snowball” effect.
Now, I’m not saying that every strong player in this server is a heavy donator. I’m sure a lot of active players didn’t donate much to gain ground. But the problem is, many people are aware of the sheer fact that you can gain advantage in this server by paying money and when these poor players have a bad day, they use that fact as an excuse to just give up and quit. And to be honest, that’s a valid excuse.
So what can be done about this? Not much in this server’s case right now but…
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Silkroad will always be Pay2Win
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That’s an easy statement to make but is it really true? Silkroad is Pay2Win because the developers wanted it to be that way and players got used to it. But private servers can adopt any economy/microtransaction model. Silkroad as a game itself is not Pay2Win, it’s just seen like it because of it’s history.
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I dont think you (they) will ever find a private server that will only sell you visuals for silk. I have only seen 1 server like this and it closed after 1-2 months because none cared.
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This is what I wanted to discuss about. Did this concept was really tested if there was only 1 server? I’m sure a lot of people would care if such server would have a name like Electus attached to it unless players of this game are so used to donate money to gain advantage that they wouldn’t play.
Now I’m not sure if such a big server like Electus would be sustainable with only “visual” donation model but there are tons of competitive genre online Free2Play games with microtransactions for visual and quality-of-life items only. And many such games are doing well.
Someone in this thread made a post about having such model in a Silkroad server but I can’t find it anymore. I really liked ideas mentioned there. Make stuff like wings, horns, grab, fight pets, stat and skill point reset scrolls, globals, avatar items(without the ability to grant blues), storage expansion items donator only and non-tradeable. Instead of having “Godsend” skills with fancy effects, make those effects possible to apply on normal skills but for donators only. I’m sure there could be more ideas to expand this, people just need some thinking outside the box instead of just claiming that Silkroad is a Pay2Win game and recycling yet another donator-friendly server.